Radio
by oppugnorhr12
Summary: Ron finds out about Harry and Hermione dancing in the tent whilst he was away.


**Title: **Radio  
><strong>Rating: <strong>PG-13  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> Ron Weasley & Hermione Granger  
><strong>Summary: <strong>Ron finds out about Harry and Hermione dancing in the tent whilst he was away.  
><strong>Spoilers:<strong> References from both Deathly Hallows film (Part 1) and book.  
><strong>AN:** This fic was written in response to this ask:

_How do you think Ron would feel if he found about the movie!Harry and movie!Hermione dance and the 'charged moments' they had after he'd left? Wouldn't he have felt cheated by both of them? What would his reaction be towards Harry & Hermione? Also, do you think Hermione ever found out what Ron saw during the locket destruction?_

Ron entered the sitting room with an old radio in his hands. "Hermione, guess what I found?"

Hermione looked up from the essay she was writing. Grinning, she said: "Is that the same radio we had with us in the tent?"

He nodded and sat beside her on the couch. Placing the radio on the table, he noticed the long sheath of parchment under Hermione's hand. Her small handwriting occupied every inch of it so that Ron could barely see the actual parchment anymore. "What's this?" he asked, taking it.

"Homework," she said, attempting to grab the piece of paper back.

Ron held the parchment out of her reach. "Homework? But Christmas holiday started only yesterday!"

"Which gives me only 2 weeks to finish it!" she argued. "And I still have another essay to write and 5 chapters to read!"

"You're mad!" he said incredulously, still refusing to give Hermione her essay back, despite her desperate attempts at reaching for it.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Give it back, Ron!"

Ron sighed and hesitantly placed the parchment back on the table. "So unfair," he mumbled, crossing his arms.

She stared at him quizzically. "What do you mean, unfair?"

He shook his head. "Nothing, never mind," he said bitterly, and stood up to leave.

"Ron," she took hold of his hand before he could walk away. "Will you stop being a prat and tell me?"

Ron turned to look at her. "_Me_, a prat?" he scoffed. "_You're_ the one who's—I hardly get to see you anymore because you decided to go back to Hogwarts while I stay here to help George out! Do you know how hard that is, Hermione? I bloody well _missed_ you, if you must know! And the first time I see you in _months_, you'd rather do that stupid _essay_ than spend time with me!"

She watched him with raised eyebrows. Her mouth then formed a small smile.

His brow creased. "It's not funny!"

She only smiled wider. "I know, Ron." She stood up and wrapped her arms around him. "I'm sorry."

He sighed, defeated. "I missed you."

Hermione hinted a strong sense of sadness and longing in his voice. It hit her hard in the chest. "I know. I missed you too." She stepped back and returned to her parchment.

Ron heaved another sigh. "Right," he said, dejected, "just finish you essay then. Never mind all the things I said. I—" he stopped when he saw Hermione fold up the parchment and stuff it in her leather bag along with her quill and ink bottle. "What are you doing?"

"Putting my essay away," she replied matter-of-factly.

"Are you done writing it?"

"No," she said, placing her bag at the foot of the couch. "I have two whole weeks to work on it anyway."

Ron stared at her in disbelief.

"Aren't you going to sit?" she asked, patting the cushions beside her. She smiled as he happily sat down beside her. She reached for the radio on the table. "Reckon this still works?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It should," he said, flicking the power switch at the back. Static noise emanated from it. He grinned. "It does." He took the radio from Hermione and turned the knob around in search of something more coherent to listen to. After a few turns, he finally found a station playing a song. "There we go!"

Hermione's eyes widened as she recognized the song playing. "It's that song!"

Ron gave her a questioning look. "What?"

"The song that Harry and I danced to!" she exclaimed. She hasn't heard that song in ages.

"You and Harry... what?" he gaped at her. "I don't particularly remember you dancing with Harry at the Yule Ball... _or_ Bill and Fleur's wedding. In fact, I don't even remember this song playing at any of the events we've been to."

"Oh, it wasn't at any event we've been to, Ron. It was in the tent."

"In the tent? When we were camping out, looking for Horcruxes?" Ron wondered when they had done this and where _he_ was when they did. He certainly did not remember any such dancing happening inside that tent.

"Yes, but _you_ weren't there. It was when you left." Hermione seemed nonchalant about the whole situation, even smiling as she hummed to the song. It was as if she didn't really see the repercussions this revelation was bringing Ron.

And the revelation definitely brought Ron to a right state. "When I left?" he echoed, panic rising in his voice. Visions of Harry and Hermione dancing, laughing and _frolicking _in a field of daisies—all while he was _gone_—started to invade his senses.

She turned to look at him with raised eyebrows, apparently sensing his discomfort. "You honestly aren't feeling—well—_jealous_, are you?"

He gaped at her. He wondered what else they have done in his absence. Harry told him that she had cried for weeks when he left! Was he only saying that to make him feel better? Did they actually have a _good time_ without him there, and just chose to hide it from him to avoid hurting his feelings? "Oh, of course not, Hermione," he said in a mock tone. "You only just _casually_ sprung up your secret affair with Harry while I was away, how's that supposed to make me jealous?"

Her jaw dropped and her face scrunched up in annoyance. "_Secret affair? _What—?"

"You danced with him, did you?" he continued, ignoring her. Everything he felt when he had had that wretched locket around his neck last year seemed to seep back into his skin. "And with the way this song sounds, it must have been a slow dance, then. Pretty _romantic_, don't you think?"

"It wasnt—!"

"What else did you do, then? Did you have a nice dinner date with him afterwards? Or maybe snuggled together?" Ron definitely was no longer thinking about the things he was saying. If he calmed down and thought things through, he knew that neither Harry nor Hermione could ever do that to him. But the very thought of his best mate and his now girlfriend keeping something as big as this infuriated him so much that it blurred even his common sense.

"RONALD!" Hermione screamed, tears stinging her eyes. "Stop! Please."

Ron froze.

"It wasn't like that Ron," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "When you left, I-" she stopped, her eyes welling up again.

He inched towards her. "Hermione—"

"I was crushed," she continued, cutting him off. She shook her head. "No, it was more than that, I was _devastated_."

He stared at her, not saying anything. They had never talked about this before, and frankly, he wanted to know more.

"Everyday, I felt as if there was this gaping void in my chest, and the more I tried to ignore it, the bigger it seemed to get. It wasn't only because you left us, it was more because I didn't know where on earth you were! There were bad people out there, Ron, and they could easily have captured you and tortured you, knowing that you were Harry's best mate, and that you were on the run with him and me! And what if they did catch you? What if they hurt you? What if you _died_?" she gasped, tears dangling from the corners of her eyes. "I could barely sleep at night! All I could think of was you and how unsafe you were out there, and how I could be—_would_ be—so lost, so empty," she paused, wiping a tear the trickled down her cheek, "so _broken_," she whispered, "if I had lost you, permanently."

Ron felt a lump rise in his throat. None of the things Harry had told him in that forest gave Hermione's reaction to his absence enough justice.

"And Harry," Hermione continued, "he was there. Everyday, he saw me—nearly lifeless, always with bloodshot eyes." She sniffed. "He was sad too, that you left, but I was obviously taking it harder than he was. He never really asked why I seemed so heartbroken. Maybe he thought I'd be more emotional because I was a girl? Or I guess he already had an inkling that you—" she paused, cheeks turning slightly pink, "that you mean more to me than what I say."

Ron couldn't help but grin a little.

She cleared her throat and continued. "And one night, as with other nights, I was sitting on one of the steps in the tent, listening to your radio, thinking what I would do if I heard your name being announced as one of those who've—" the words got caught in her throat and she shook her head. "So, just for that night, to try and stop myself from worrying, I decided to turn the radio's knob and listen to something else. And I found this song playing."

Ron continued to watch her in silence.

"Harry was sitting on one of the chairs. I could feel him watching me, but I couldn't bring myself to look at him because I knew I'd only start crying again once he tried talking to me." She sighed, picking on her fingers as she reminisced. "But he didn't talk to me. Instead, he sauntered over to where I was and pulled me to my feet, silently asking me to dance."

"What did you say?" Ron asked, trying his best to rid his voice of bitterness, but doing a terrible job at it.

Hermione shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "I didn't want to, at first, but he reached out behind my neck and took the locket off of me. I instantly felt better, of course."

"And so you agreed to be whisked off your feet and dance with him, then?" he said a bit too heatedly.

"Ron," she sighed, exasperated, "it really wasn't like that. He just wanted to cheer me up."

"And was he successful?"

"Well," she pursed her lips in thought. "Yes."

Ron sighed, frowning. Part of him wanted to be grateful to Harry for keeping Hermione happy while he was gone, but a bigger part of him only got even more jealous than he was before. It was Harry who was able to make her smile and laugh, not him. And the worst part was that he knew it was his fault. It was him that made her cry. If he hadn't been the world's biggest, most selfish prat, Harry wouldn't even have to dance with Hermione to cheer her up. Hermione wouldn't need cheering up in the first place. Ron clasped and unclasped his hands together, feeling his blood boil over his inadequacy. "Was it a good dance?" he asked, trying to keep the conversation going, although his anger was glaringly obvious from his voice.

"Ron," she said, her voice pleading.

"Well, _obviously_ it was a good dance since it made you happy," he said through gritted teeth. "That was a stupid question."

Hermione buried her head in her hands. "Ron," she groaned, "why are you being this way?"

"What did you do after the dance, then? Did you—"

"I pulled back," Hermione cut in indignantly. "I stopped, and I pulled back."

Ron blinked at her. "But I thought—why?"

"Because he wasn't _you_!" She glared at him with furrowed brows. "You are so _thick_, Ronald! Isn't it obvious? That dance cheered me up for a while, but it didn't do anything to bring you back! At the end of the day, you were still gone, and it _still_ broke my heart!"

Ron opened his mouth to say something but no words came out. He felt his anger slowly dissipate.

Hermione buried her face in her hands. "I just don't understand, Ron," she whispered through her fingers. "_Why_ would you even, for _one second_, think that Harry—that he and I—"

"I've been scared of it ever since I could remember," Ron whispered.

Hermione looked up from her hands. "What?"

Ron's ears turned slightly pink. "Well, I mean, It's always been Harry, hasn't it? Everyone takes one look at him and immediately sees bravery, courage, chivalry—a hero," he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Next to him, who am I?"

Hermione stared at him with her mouth slightly ajar. Suddenly, she saw that same little boy she had met on the Hogwarts train years back; the boy who wanted so badly to be recognized, but never was. The boy who lacked confidence and tried to hide it, but was something he really never was able to successfully hide from her. She always saw right through him; knew him far more than he was aware. She just never had the courage to tell him. "Ron—"

"Whenever I heard the other girls talking, they were always going on about how much they fancied Harry. So what was to stop me from thinking that—I mean if _you_ were given the choice between him and me, the answer would have been obvious, wouldn't it?" Ron frowned at his feet. "And of course the locket made it worse. All that time in the forest, when I was wearing that blasted thing and saw you and Harry talking or just spending time together, all that entered my head was how very likely it was that you... that you were in love with him."

"What?" Hermione raised her eyebrows, bewildered. "But Ron, I never—"

"But that's all I saw, Hermione. That locket, it made me feel things worse than any I've ever felt before. And when I destroyed it—" he stopped, his face etched with despondency, as if he were facing the horrors of the locket once more. "I sometimes still get nightmares from that time."

"Nightmares?" Hermione gave him a questioning look. "Of the scream?"

"Scream?" Ron stared at her, head tilted to one side.

"Harry said it just screamed," Hermione responded, shrugging.

"Oh."

"Oh? What do you mean, _oh_?" She gaped at him. When he didn't respond, she narrowed her eyes. "It didn't just scream, did it?"

Ron felt himself grow warm. He tore his eyes off of her and shook his head.

"No," Hermione reaffirmed his answer. "So what did it do?"

Ron gave her a quick glance, winced, and stared back at the floor.

"Ron," Hermione insisted, "what did it do and why have you never told me?"

"It's embarrassing. And painful."

"Oh, Ron," Hermione sighed.

Ron continued staring at the floor, unmoving.

Hermione placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a melancholic smile. "It's okay," she said. "You don't have to tell me, but getting things off your chest might help. And when you're ready to do that—"

"It spoke," Ron said unexpectedly between them. "In Riddle's voice, it spoke. It told me that—that it could see what was in my heart and that all I ever feared was true."

Hermione watched him, frowning.

Ron's hands shook slightly as he revisited that moment in the forest. "It told me that Mum didn't really love me, because, well, all my siblings were better than me. Said Mum would prefer Harry as a son, because I really wasn't worth anything at all—"

"Oh, Ron, you musn't think that's true!"

"Well, when you think about it, it's sort of true, isn't it?"

"No!" Hermione nearly screamed. "No, Ron, it was only playing with your head! Your Mum loves Harry, but you're her son and she would never want it otherwise." She held Ron's hand tightly in hers. "Trust me, I know her. I know how much she loves you. How much your whole family loves you."

Ron squeezed her hand and gave her a weak smile.

"I hope you stop getting nightmares about that, Ron, really."

"That's not all though."

"No?"

"After it said all of that, well, Harry—he came out of the locket."

"Harry?"

"Yeah, and you."

"Me?" Hermione looked bewildered.

"Well, of course it wasn't _really_ Harry and you. It was sort of like ghost versions of the two of you. You were all... silver and, well, _smokey_. But they did look remarkably like you. It almost seemed so real."

Hermione nodded, biting her lip. "Did we... say anything?"

"Oh, yeah."

Hermione cocked her head to the side and waited for him to continue.

"Harry—locket Harry, that is, said how much better you guys were off without me. That I shouldn't have come back, because I was only a burden to the two of you. And that my mother actually did prefer him over me."

Hermione's mouth hung. "Ron that's—"

"And you agreed," he said. "Locket you, I mean. You said... you said no one would prefer me over Harry. Harry was so much better than me at everything. And me, you said... you said that I-" Ron tried his best to prevent his hands from shaking.

"Ron," Hermione said, worriedly. "Ron, you know that's not—"

"—that I was nothing. _Nothing_, Hermione," he continued, not hearing Hermione at all. He felt the familiar pang in his chest and the vision of Hermione's locket form vividly entered his senses. "You said I was nothing. Nothing, nothing,_ nothing_. And _that_," Ron swallowed, trying to push back the lump that was forming in his throat, "out of all the things I have ever feared, Hermione, out of _everything_, that was what I feared the most."

Hermione felt tears form in the corners of her eyes. She shook her head and whispered, "but it's not true."

"That you thought I was worthless, that you would rather be with Harry... Harry, not me—I've always thought—and I was so scared—and to hear those words coming from you, I—" Ron was panting now and the words choked him. He shook and felt his eyes water.

"Ron, you can stop now," Hermione whispered, clutching his arm tight.

Ron buried his face in his hands, still trembling.

"Ron," Hermione said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. "Ron, listen."

"And then you kissed him."

Hermione's jaw dropped. "_What?_"

Ron looked up at her, eyes red. "You pulled him, sort of embracing him, and you kissed him. Full on the mouth," his voice cracked. "And that was—when I saw that—that was the worst that I have _ever_—I just—I couldn't bear it—so I—I—"

"You destroyed the locket," Hermione said, finishing his sentence for him. "So you destroyed it Ron, and realized that those—_things_—weren't real."

Ron wiped his face on his hands. He whispered, "but they _seemed_ so—"

"But they weren't." Hermione took his shaking hands. "They weren't real Ron," she placed both his hands on either side of her face, "_this_ is."

Ron stared into her eyes. A sense of comfort slowly seeped through him.

Hermione put her arms around his neck, leaned forward, kissed him, and rested her forehead on his. "Was it like that?"

"Huh?"

"Did I kiss locket Harry like that?"

"No."

Hermione sat back and creased her brow. "No?"

"No, it was—" Ron croaked, wincing, "_passionate_. Like... like you were _hungry_ for him, like you wanted all of him—I've never seen you so aggressive," he stared back into her eyes, trying to make her understand how much it hurt to imagine it, "that's what made it even more painful."

Hermione watched him as he wiped the tears from beneath his eyes. She had never seen him so weak before. Never had he shown such a display of emotion in front of her. All she wanted was to make him understand. She needed to let him know that he needn't fear any of the things that had been haunting him, because they couldn't be farther from the truth.

She leaned forward again, until their noses touched. She looked into his eyes and tried to convey all that she felt and had ever felt for him. She inched closer until her mouth was a fraction away from his and their breaths mingled.

"Hermione," Ron whispered, staring back into her eyes. "What—"

But his words were muffled by Hermione's mouth, as she crushed her mouth onto his. She parted his lips and kissed him deeply—as passionately as she could. She sucked on his lower lip and let her tongue dart in his mouth, not really entirely sure of what she was doing. But she might have been doing it right, for Ron reciprocated enthusiastically, letting his tongue meet hers as he tangled his fingers in her hair. They kissed for what seemed like hours, exploring each others' mouths until their heads were dizzy with desire.

Ron groaned and Hermione pulled back, panting. He was lying with his back against the couch's arm rest and she was straddling him. Hermione turned a shade of pink, got off of him, and sat back on the couch. Ron sat back up. She wondered how long have they been in that position.

"_Blimey_, Hermione," Ron panted, clutching his forehead.

"Was it—was it like that?" Hermione asked, catching her breath.

Ron shook his head. "Are you kidding? That was—_Merlin_—that was _loads_ better."

Hermione smiled triumphantly.

Ron laughed and pulled her close, holding her in his arms.

Hermione nestled into the crook of his neck. She placed her arm over his chest, relishing the feeling of being in his arms. Nothing could feel more comfortable. "I love you, Ron," she whispered. "Just you. Not Viktor, McLaggen or Harry," she paused, "well I love him, of course, as a brother," she shook her head. "But you," she took his hand. "I want you. _Just_ _you_." She frowned, wishing there were words to actually convey what she felt, for she deemed all these words inadequate. But these words were all she had. She sighed. "It's _always_ been you, Ronald Weasley."

Ron's eyes misted and he tightened his hold on her, resting his cheek on the top of her head.

"And I want you to know. I want you to understand that, Ron. And I will do everything-I will _snog _you everyday like that if need be—"

Ron chuckled, tilted her chin and kissed her. "It's okay," he said, pulling back, smiling. "I get it now." He wrapped his arms around again and buried his face in her bushy hair, inhaling her scent. "You don't have to snog me like that everyday."

"Mmm," Hermione buried herself in his chest. "And what if I want to?"

Ron pulled back to look at her with raised eyebrows. "Want to?"

"I quite liked it," she said, grinning mischievously. "Didn't you?"

"YES," Ron said, rather loudly. "I mean, yes," he said, clearing his throat. "Yes, that would be lovely."

Hermione laughed and leaned her head back onto his chest.

Ron reached for the radio, which they've both forgotten was still softly playing music, and turned the volume up.

And as they sat on that couch, wrapped in each other's arms, Ron smiled thinking that, after today, he probably won't have nightmares about that locket again.

And he never did.


End file.
